Taking Shape: Degas as Sculptor

Pasadena, CA—The Norton Simon Museum presents Taking Shape: Degas as Sculptor, an illuminating exhibition that explores the improvisational nature of Edgar Degas’s artistic practice and considers the affinities between sculpting, painting and drawing in his oeuvre. By bringing together the Museum’s entire collection of modèles, the first and only set of bronzes cast from the artist’s original wax and plaster statuettes, and related pastels, drawings and paintings, Taking Shape offers viewers the opportunity to study Degas’s artistic process across media. Seen together, this expansive body of Degas’s works—one of the largest collections of its kind in the world—celebrates the artist’s boundless enthusiasm for creation and his insatiable impulse to build form.

Renowned for his technical experimentation, Degas (French, 1834–1917) exhibited just one sculpture during his lifetime, the controversial Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen, which startled visitors to the 1881 Impressionist exhibition with its unidealized physiognomy and radical use of real materials such as silk slippers and a wig made from human hair. In the privacy of his studio, however, Degas modeled in wax and clay throughout his career, producing hundreds of small-scale, informal studies of horses, dancers and bathers that were seen only by close friends and visitors. It was not until the artist’s death—100 years ago this year—that the extent of this sculptural production was revealed. Of the nearly 150 models retrieved from Degas’s studio, the artist’s heirs selected 74 of the best-preserved examples to cast in bronze and sell as an edition, making public and permanent these transient exercises in form.

The unique set of sculptures in the Simon collection[1] served as the matrix for the serial bronzes that followed, and in some cases they preserve evidence of Degas’s handwork that has been altered or repaired in the wax originals. Capturing the condition of the figurines when they were discovered in the artist’s studio, the modèles vividly convey the instinctive way in which Degas pressed and smeared pliable wax and plaster over handmade wire armatures, and bulked the core with cork and other easily accessible materials. Rather than serving solely as sources for paintings or pastels, these sculptures were independent objects, what the artist called essais—“trials” or “experiments.” For Degas, the act of sculpting was an end in itself.

The direct and openly tactile techniques that Degas honed as a sculptor also permeate his work in two dimensions, as the artist ground rich overlays of pigment into paper and put aside his paintbrush to fashion frothy tutus from his thumbprints. Visitors will see familiar favorites that demonstrate these creative approaches, including oil paintings such as Dancers in the Rotunda at the Paris Opera, c. 1875-1878 (reworked c. 1894), and superb pastels like Dancers in the Wings, c. 1876-78, in which the artist innovatively combined pastel, gouache and peinture à l’essence and built up the composition from 10 discrete strips of paper. These exceptional works, when viewed alongside the Simon’s collection of modèles and related bronzes (including Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen), reveal the artist’s fascination with form, balance and the evocation of movement.

Taking Shape: Degas as Sculptor is organized by Emily Talbot, assistant curator at the Norton Simon Museum. The exhibition is one of many worldwide that honors the centenary of Degas’s death. A series of special events and offerings will be organized in conjunction with the exhibition and announced later in the year.

Image Credit: Dancer Ready to Dance, the Right Foot Forward, modeled 1885-90; cast 1919-21, Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917), Bronze, No. 57, Modèle cast, Norton Simon Art Foundation